Belgium visual artist Ief Spincemaille artistic journey crosses visual arts, design and performance and a diverse range of working
contexts. He works in bicycle factories, prisons, residential complexes, ... Exploring the boundaries of his field of work (that of the arts), he plays with its existing frameworks and shapes. Not just out of joy of playing a formalistic game, but from a necessity for new forms that better respond to his imagination.
Spincemaille succeeds in combining wonder and poetry with a strongly committed and social and political practice. Doing so he continues an avant-garde tradition, an immanent criticism of the cultural institute and a search for closing the gap between art and life, and translating this tradition to a radical new contemporary form.
Rope is a metaphor for this journey. Spincemaille travels to unknown terrain with an absurdly large design object, looking for new ways of making and showing, looking for what it means to create. Rope is a search for new futures, and this with one of the oldest objects that exist: a rope.
Atelier Ief Spincemaille loves art, design, technology and social challenges. The workshop realizes diverse projects bringing together architecture, engineering, graphic design and hand crafts. Atelier
Ief Spincemaille works together with a variety of partners such as weaving factory Rubis, engineering firm Comate, media arts
organization Werktank, the Catholic University of Leuven and LUCA School of Arts. The workshop is based in Leuven, a small but dynamic city with a rich cultural foundation.
More on Atelier Ief Spincemaille: www.iefspincemaille.com
Since it’s creation in May 2017, Rope has appeared in:
Guangzhou (China) Guanzhou Triennial, Firenze (ITALY), Fabbrica Europa Potsdam (GERMANY) Design Thinking Conference, Ostend (BELGIUM) TAZ Arts Festival, Touring worldwide with Seppe Baeyens’ (Ultima Vez) dance performance.
In 2020-2021 Rope will travel to: Montevideo (URUGUAY), Pittsburgh (US), Marseille (FR) and Kortrijk (BE)
Rope was nominated ‘Winner’ in the category ‘Community’ at the Henry Van de Velde Awards, 2019.
Rope received an honourable mention at the Textirama Foundation Awards, 2020.